The Walking Dead: What Morgan Teaches Us About Trauma

We got that throwback Morgan in this week’s episode. By that I mean, let’s talk about trauma. That means we have to start with what Morgan has been through and how he managed to cope with that past. Season 1 Morgan, the Morgan we see the least of, is the Morgan doing—or at least trying to do—what has to be done. He is protecting his son Duane. He is also haunted by the ghost/walker of his wife Jenny who he knows he must shoot, but cannot. It’s still early in the timeline—early enough that the people we know now didn’t exist. Morgan was just a widow. Carol was an abused wife. Tara was living in an apartment with her sister, niece, and dying father. Michonne was a mother living in a government shelter with her son and boyfriend. Rick was looking for his lost family. They were not killers. They were people going through a traumatic event and dealing with it the best they could. And then something happened. Sofia wandered out of Herschel’s barn a walker. Michonne’s son was killed by walkers because, in part, of her boyfriend’s negligence. Tara helped kill innocent people because she believed the lies of a sociopath who happened to wander into her life. Rick’s wife died. And Morgan? After he lost his wife, after he looked at her through the scope of a gun and could not kill the thing she had become, after he saved Rick, then he lost his son. And they were changed. That’s what trauma does: it changes you, fundamentally.

Carol calcified into the killer I have known and loved for so…